Briefs

Delegates to the 74th national convention of the American Federation of Teachers, held this summer in Cincinnati, unanimously reelected their longtime president, Albert Shanker, to his 11th consecutive two-year term in office. In his keynote address to the 3,000 delegates, Shanker urged union affiliates to get behind the AFT's "Lessons for Life" campaign. The year-old program calls for teachers, parents, and school districts to work together to raise standards of conduct and academic achievement in public schools. Shanker, who has been undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer, had to postpone his speech for a day because he did not feel well enough to deliver it. When he did appear, the 67-year-old president, one of the nation's most respected education leaders ( "The Education of Al Shanker," February 1996), remained seated but delivered a spirited address nonetheless. He said that any federation local that had not signed on to the Lessons for Life campaign was "engaged in union malpractice." "It is as much your duty to preserve public education as it is to negotiate a good contract," Shanker told the assembled delegates.

It was a modern-day version of the story about the big bad wolf, and Miriam Hutchinson wasn't buying it. Miriam and her 4th grade classmates in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wrote Governor Gary Johnson last spring questioning his opposition to a plan by federal wildlife officials to reintroduce captive wolves into the wild. What they got back was a form letter assuring them that there are "a lot of wolves in New Mexico that live in the wild" and warning them to "stay away" if they saw one. But Miriam knew the statement wasn't true--there are no wild wolves in New Mexico--and she told Johnson so in a letter. The governor and the man who wrote his reply, Lieutenant Governor Walter Bradley, eventually acknowledged their mistake...